So Many Problems, Kristof.

This article written about domestic violence as a societal issue (by the one and only, Nicholas Kristof) reminded me of the conclusion to Death by Culture by Naryan – in which she overgeneralizes this issue in America by over generalizing the root cause of it to be gun violence (in order to make her point about “women being burnt to death” / dowry murders in India)

Except here, Nicholas Kristof does this himself:

“Three steps are needed. First, we must end the silence. Second, we must ensure that police departments everywhere take the issue seriously before a victim becomes a corpse. Third, offenders should be required to attend training programs like the one run by Men Stopping Violence.”

This is just one of the many problems with this article..

Ugh, this is infuriating.

Alia Roth

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One thought on “So Many Problems, Kristof.”

I really see how Kristof really doesn’t see what the actual causes of domestic violence are, along with the actual history of it in the United States. He also overplays and really misrepresents women’s roles in domestic abuse. He also victimizes women instead of portraying men as the perpetrators–it’s always women experiencing abuse, never men abusing women! He’s just as institutionalized into the media way about talking about violence committed by men as everyone else! He also just has a terrible conclusion that doesn’t mention anything about progress but claims that it does. shameful stuff. But he brings up an interesting solution on the individual level which could be applied on an institutional level. If all men who committed domestic abuse were forced to actually address what was wrong, repeat offenses might drop first and then the use of violence against spouses might drop as a whole. I’m a big fan of solutions that actually fix problems, rather than just locking people up and expecting them to change in institutions that enforce a violent masculinity and use slave labor. We’ve seen how media is a really bad influence on masculinity, but in this way, so is the government as long as it keeps institutions which never solve issues of male violence in an institutional way. There’s no real way of attacking violent masculinity as a whole or at its root because there is not just one root. So as much as Kristof’s ideas need building upon, they actually can be built upon.